Attorney General John Suthers said Friday that a plan by Colorado lawmakers to tap a workers’ compensation fund for $500 million to balance the state budget is unconstitutional and impossible to defend in court.

“Pinnacol’s funds are not assets of the state and Pinnacol’s policyholders have vested rights in any surplus funds,” wrote Solicitor General Dan Domenico in a legal analysis that Suthers, a Republican, asked him to prepare. Seizing the money “would violate the Colorado Constitution.”

Domenico also wrote that he could not “envision how our office would make a good-faith defense of such an action,” and even if it could, it would be a long and costly court battle.

The analysis was released one day after the Colorado Senate gave initial approval to two bills that would take $500 million from Pinnacol Assurance, the workers’ comp insurance fund, and clearly put the quasi- governmental agency under state control.

The Senate is scheduled to give final approval to the bills, as well as the $17.9 billion budget, on Monday, allowing the whole package to move to the House.

The budget moving through the Senate is balanced on the state’s seizure of the Pinnacol money. If that doesn’t happen, colleges and universities would face a $300 million cut on top of the more than $100 million decrease they’ve already seen.

Backers of the legislation point out that the state created Pinnacol and made it tax-exempt, which can’t be said of a private company.

Senate Majority Leader Brandon Shaffer, D-Longmont, a key backer of the Pinnacol proposal, said he ran the idea by attorneys for the legislature and Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter.

“Independently of each other, they all came to the same conclusion” that the lawmakers could change the use of Pinnacol’s assets as they saw fit, Shaffer said.

A spokesman for Ritter said the governor had not taken a position on the Pinnacol legislation.

“Timing of this opinion really stinks”

Shaffer said the memo from Suthers’ office was nothing more than an attempt to “spook” lawmakers, noting that the attorney general issued a similar memo in 2007 stating that legislation that kept property-tax rates from going down was unconstitutional. The Colorado Supreme Court upheld the measure in March.

House Majority Leader Paul Weissmann, D-Louisville, agreed, saying Suthers was “playing politics.” But he also said a lawsuit was inevitable.

Some lawmakers say a court battle would mean the state would not get the money anytime soon and should look for other ways to balance the budget.

Finding cuts elsewhere may be tough

Weissmann said there are some places lawmakers could go to raise more money or cut services, “but not to the tune of $300 million.”

However, House Minority Leader Mike May, R-Parker, said the memo from Suthers showed the plan to balance the budget with Pinnacol’s assets, which he said Republicans wouldn’t support even if it were legal, was unwise.

President Donald Trump fired off angry tweets Sunday morning railing against the Justice Department special counsel's Russia investigation and attacking the integrity of former FBI director James B. Comey and his former deputy, Andrew McCabe, charging that their notes from conversations with him were "Fake Memos."

Jordan's rising role as a U.S.-backed pillar in the precarious Middle East, receiving newly re-upped aid of $1.275 billion a year, builds on a unique 15-year partnership with Colorado pilots that officials this week said they want to expand.

President Donald Trump's lawyer called on the Justice Department to immediately shut down the special counsel probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, in the wake of the firing of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.